They do it with limos, so why not cruise ships?
Slicing huge cruise ships in half, then slotting in an extra segment to lengthen them, is more or less a license to print money for cruise operators – so this 'jumboization' procedure is becoming rather common.
Humanity, it seems, can't get enough of cruise ships, and they are getting bigger and bigger. The largest of them all (currently) is Royal Caribbean Group's Icon of the Seas - it's 1,200 ft (365 m) long, 159 ft (48 m) wide, and it's stacked no less than 20 decks high in order to carry just under 10,000 people, including crew.
This behemoth cost around US$2 billion and took around two and a half years to build and launch. Currently, the cruise ship industry can't build new ships fast enough to satisfy the rampant demand.
The cheaper, easier way for operators to expand their carrying capacity is to make existing ships bigger - by stretching them. For an average of around $80 million, and just a couple of months out of service, operators can slice an existing ship in half, slot in a new slice that's designed to fit perfectly, weld it together, and come away with enough extra premium cabins to pay off the whole operation within a few years.
The result: with a much smaller outlay and a negligible gap in service, operators can make an existing boat much more profitable.
Want to see a timelapse of the stretching process? Here's the MV Balmoral Cruise Ship being operated upon...
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